The field of the invention is magnetic tape playback apparatus of the kind used in radio and television broadcasting.
There are many applications where a recorded tape must be edited, and specific locations be identified for the deletion and addition of recorded material. One example where this is required is in preparing raw taped news such as on-the-spot interviews for broadcast. Such tapes may be used only once and must be edited in a hurry. The fastest and most economical way of doing so is to play the tape and physically cut the tape and re-splice it with sections removed or added.
The precise pinpointing of recorded material on a tape requires some skill on the part of the editor who must guess where the tape should be cut. The work is almost always done under the pressure of time deadlines and requires more skill with the higher recording speeds. A timing miscalculation may result in cutting the tape at the wrong place and either losing a wanted section or not deleting an unwanted section.